Going to Chicago this weekend...
MUSIC
Zero 7 [ft. José González]: "Futures"Zero 7 might be a compound lighter than Air, but their earnestness-- contrasted to the (French band)'s high-tech Bacharach riffs-- should at least partially absolve their MOR excursions. The sun-kissed wooziness of their new album, The Garden, is a guileless species of retro. The first single, "Futures", approximates, in one friend's words, the sound of James Taylor and CSNY tripping together. A breezy midsummer languor drenches everything: the watertight drum groove, Henry's backup vocals, the pancaked synths, and picnic strumming. And yes, it's the toothless, melismatic cod-soul that you and your colleagues can enjoy an al fresco latte to, but it never claimed otherwise.
Ron Sexsmith - All in good Time
The Flaming Lips comment on "The Sound of Failure":
We have a friend whose father was dying of cancer - I say "was" because it (the cancer and his death) dragged on agonizingly for over a year - and they (our friends) were becoming, understandably, weary of being forced to be upbeat... And I remember hearing a comment once about how annoying it was, to them, to have to hear this gratingly jubilant fake enthusiasm (usually hokey hyped-up pop groups like Black Eyed Peas, Destiny's Child, Ashlee Simpson, Hillary Duff, etc.) blasting out of the "Muzak" systems virtually everywhere they went. To them this cheerleader-type assault was really only effective if you didn't actually have any real psychic stress... And they felt that it was, surprisingly, helpful to them to try to understand their fears and their sadness - as opposed to pretending that it's "all good." And, you see, this is true insight... finally we know it's okay to have a troubled mind, it's okay to fail... And so this song (which was written in the car on the way up to New York from Oklahoma while I drove and Steven played battery powered keyboard and computer) is about a young girl whose best friend has died, and everywhere she goes (like the friends I mentioned earlier) she must endure the empty optimism of the inexperienced. She wants to know, since it has arrived, what is despair, what is hope, what is failure... And what is in the darkness??
The line in the song, "so go tell Britney and go tell Gwen" is obviously a reference back to my friends and their Muzak incident... meaning, "Yeah, go tell Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani that their energy and their Prom Queen smiles only go to prove that they don't empathize with my sadness." I believe, in the song, that Britney and Gwen could be thought of as this grieving girl's less mature friends... and that she's not trying to go against them, she just doesn't want to pretend that she understands what she doesn't really understand - what death is... what despair is... what existential fear is... She doesn't know, but she's starting to find out...
EXPLAINED
Slate
Do big hailstones ever kill people?
At least 27 people died as tornadoes and hailstorms struck the Midwest and the South on Sunday. So far it seems like the strong winds—and not the "softball-sized" balls of falling ice—have done most of the damage. A tree fell on one person, another died when his mobile home rolled over, and a baby was blown down the street. Do giant hailstones ever kill anyone?
Yes, but it's very rare. Hailstorms have caused only a handful of deaths in the United States over the last 100 years or so; most of those killed were children. We have reports of one child dying from a hailstone strike in 1893 and another in 1928. A Texas farmer perished on account of hail in 1930, and babies had their skulls broken by balls of ice in 1979 and 1981. Adults do get hit, but they're less likely to perish from their injuries. "I got hit so hard I thought I was going to pass out," one Fort Worth, Texas, victim of "softball-sized" hail told the Associated Press in 1995. "I started running and got hit in the head. Blood was everywhere," said another.Hailstone deaths in other countries are somewhat more common. A few years ago, the Chinese government reported that at least seven people in Zhengzhou died in a storm of "egg-sized" hail. Dozens more ended up in the hospital. In Bangladesh, a giant storm of "grapefruit-sized" hail killed almost a hundred people in 1986. Some of the stones weighed more than 2 pounds.
Americans may be less likely to get killed by hail because we spend so much time indoors. (Weather patterns in North America may also make hailstorms less severe.) Animals that don't have this luxury tend to die in greater numbers. Individual hailstorms have killed dozens of horses and hundreds of chickens at a time in the United States. An 1888 storm in India is said to have wiped out more than 1,600 animals.
Three factors contribute to making a hailstorm especially dangerous: the size of the stones, the frequency with which they fall, and the wind speed. The killer hailstorm in Zhengzhou didn't have very big stones, but fierce winds pushed them earthward at very high speeds. More frequent hail increases your likelihood of getting hit in the head or another vulnerable spot. (Size and frequency trade off as a general rule: The bigger the hailstones, the fewer of them there are.) Hailstones do come in different shapes, but there's little evidence that a spiky ball of ice does any more damage than a round sphere. Stones can also come in elongated forms, in cross-shapes, or with rings around the middle.
How big is a softball-sized hailstone? About 4.5 inches in diameter. Climatologists don't like using balls and fruits to describe hailstones, since not everyone knows exactly how big a softball or grapefruit is supposed to be. (They prefer to use coins—dime-sized, nickel-sized, quarter-sized, and half-dollar-sized—as a point of reference.) Government weather services do have some guidelines: Grapefruit-sized hail is 4 inches in diameter, baseball-sized hail is 2.75 inches, golf-ball-sized hail is 1.75 inches, ping-pong-ball-sized hail is 1.5 inches, and pea-sized hail is less than half an inch in diameter.
MUSIC
Zero 7 [ft. José González]: "Futures"Zero 7 might be a compound lighter than Air, but their earnestness-- contrasted to the (French band)'s high-tech Bacharach riffs-- should at least partially absolve their MOR excursions. The sun-kissed wooziness of their new album, The Garden, is a guileless species of retro. The first single, "Futures", approximates, in one friend's words, the sound of James Taylor and CSNY tripping together. A breezy midsummer languor drenches everything: the watertight drum groove, Henry's backup vocals, the pancaked synths, and picnic strumming. And yes, it's the toothless, melismatic cod-soul that you and your colleagues can enjoy an al fresco latte to, but it never claimed otherwise.
Ron Sexsmith - All in good Time
The Flaming Lips comment on "The Sound of Failure":
We have a friend whose father was dying of cancer - I say "was" because it (the cancer and his death) dragged on agonizingly for over a year - and they (our friends) were becoming, understandably, weary of being forced to be upbeat... And I remember hearing a comment once about how annoying it was, to them, to have to hear this gratingly jubilant fake enthusiasm (usually hokey hyped-up pop groups like Black Eyed Peas, Destiny's Child, Ashlee Simpson, Hillary Duff, etc.) blasting out of the "Muzak" systems virtually everywhere they went. To them this cheerleader-type assault was really only effective if you didn't actually have any real psychic stress... And they felt that it was, surprisingly, helpful to them to try to understand their fears and their sadness - as opposed to pretending that it's "all good." And, you see, this is true insight... finally we know it's okay to have a troubled mind, it's okay to fail... And so this song (which was written in the car on the way up to New York from Oklahoma while I drove and Steven played battery powered keyboard and computer) is about a young girl whose best friend has died, and everywhere she goes (like the friends I mentioned earlier) she must endure the empty optimism of the inexperienced. She wants to know, since it has arrived, what is despair, what is hope, what is failure... And what is in the darkness??
The line in the song, "so go tell Britney and go tell Gwen" is obviously a reference back to my friends and their Muzak incident... meaning, "Yeah, go tell Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani that their energy and their Prom Queen smiles only go to prove that they don't empathize with my sadness." I believe, in the song, that Britney and Gwen could be thought of as this grieving girl's less mature friends... and that she's not trying to go against them, she just doesn't want to pretend that she understands what she doesn't really understand - what death is... what despair is... what existential fear is... She doesn't know, but she's starting to find out...
EXPLAINED
Slate
Do big hailstones ever kill people?
At least 27 people died as tornadoes and hailstorms struck the Midwest and the South on Sunday. So far it seems like the strong winds—and not the "softball-sized" balls of falling ice—have done most of the damage. A tree fell on one person, another died when his mobile home rolled over, and a baby was blown down the street. Do giant hailstones ever kill anyone?
Yes, but it's very rare. Hailstorms have caused only a handful of deaths in the United States over the last 100 years or so; most of those killed were children. We have reports of one child dying from a hailstone strike in 1893 and another in 1928. A Texas farmer perished on account of hail in 1930, and babies had their skulls broken by balls of ice in 1979 and 1981. Adults do get hit, but they're less likely to perish from their injuries. "I got hit so hard I thought I was going to pass out," one Fort Worth, Texas, victim of "softball-sized" hail told the Associated Press in 1995. "I started running and got hit in the head. Blood was everywhere," said another.Hailstone deaths in other countries are somewhat more common. A few years ago, the Chinese government reported that at least seven people in Zhengzhou died in a storm of "egg-sized" hail. Dozens more ended up in the hospital. In Bangladesh, a giant storm of "grapefruit-sized" hail killed almost a hundred people in 1986. Some of the stones weighed more than 2 pounds.
Americans may be less likely to get killed by hail because we spend so much time indoors. (Weather patterns in North America may also make hailstorms less severe.) Animals that don't have this luxury tend to die in greater numbers. Individual hailstorms have killed dozens of horses and hundreds of chickens at a time in the United States. An 1888 storm in India is said to have wiped out more than 1,600 animals.
Three factors contribute to making a hailstorm especially dangerous: the size of the stones, the frequency with which they fall, and the wind speed. The killer hailstorm in Zhengzhou didn't have very big stones, but fierce winds pushed them earthward at very high speeds. More frequent hail increases your likelihood of getting hit in the head or another vulnerable spot. (Size and frequency trade off as a general rule: The bigger the hailstones, the fewer of them there are.) Hailstones do come in different shapes, but there's little evidence that a spiky ball of ice does any more damage than a round sphere. Stones can also come in elongated forms, in cross-shapes, or with rings around the middle.
How big is a softball-sized hailstone? About 4.5 inches in diameter. Climatologists don't like using balls and fruits to describe hailstones, since not everyone knows exactly how big a softball or grapefruit is supposed to be. (They prefer to use coins—dime-sized, nickel-sized, quarter-sized, and half-dollar-sized—as a point of reference.) Government weather services do have some guidelines: Grapefruit-sized hail is 4 inches in diameter, baseball-sized hail is 2.75 inches, golf-ball-sized hail is 1.75 inches, ping-pong-ball-sized hail is 1.5 inches, and pea-sized hail is less than half an inch in diameter.
posted by D @ 8:52 AM
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